RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/take-that-biden-harris-doj-files-complaint-against-hamas-mass-murderers/

More a campaign document than a charging instrument . . . and a fundamentally unserious one.

Could it be more fitting that, in the criminal complaint against Hamas leaders unsealed in Manhattan federal court today, the lead defendant charged by the Justice Department is Ismael Haniyeh. Yes, if you were wondering, that would be the Ismael Haniyeh who was killed during a daring Israeli Defense Forces operation in Tehran about five weeks ago (on July 31).

If there was any doubt about it, “September 10 counterterrorism” is back.

The expression refers to the eight years between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of that complex in the jihadist atrocities that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. That is the period, spanning the Clinton administration, when our government decided to regard jihadist terrorism as a law-enforcement problem to be addressed foremost by courtroom prosecutions.

Merrick Garland, now the Biden-Harris administration attorney general, was a top lawyer in the Clinton Justice Department. The Clinton strategy was not the Justice Department’s doing; America’s counterterrorism strategy is the president’s call. But having been there at the time, I can attest that DOJ was the strategy’s most enthusiastic advocate.

I can further attest that the strategy was a national-security train wreck.

It makes sense, it should be needless to say, to conduct courtroom prosecutions of terrorists who are captured trying to carry out attacks in the United States during ostensible peacetime. There is an argument (I don’t subscribe to it, but it is commonly held nonetheless) that such prosecutions are required by the Constitution, especially if some of the terrorists happen to be American citizens (as was not uncommon in the Clinton-era terrorism prosecutions). It makes even more sense to prosecute material supporters of terrorism in order to choke off the funding and recruitment of foreign terrorist organizations — a significant improvement in American counterterrorism law enacted in the mid Nineties.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stefanik-urges-probe-into-hochul-after-feds-bring-chinese-foreign-agent-charges-against-former-staffer/?utm_

Representative Elise Stefanik called for a probe into New York governor Kathy Hochul and her administration after the Justice Department indicted the governor’s former deputy chief of staff on Tuesday for allegedly working as an agent of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Linda Sun, a former staffer for Hochul and former governor Andrew Cuomo, was arrested today with her husband, Chris Hu. The charges relate to her work as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese government and money-laundering that Hu allegedly engaged in to hide the proceeds of Sun’s efforts.

Until today’s arrests, few members of Congress had commented on some New York government officials’ apparent ties to China’s consulate general in Manhattan and pro-Beijing community organizations. Stefanik (R., N.Y.) is the first to call for an investigation into Hochul and her administration.

“Failed Far Left Democrat Kathy Hochul allowed Communist Chinese spy Linda Sun unfettered access to the highest levels of New York State government,” Stefanik said in a statement to National Review this afternoon.

“From allowing Chinese police stations, to maintaining a sister city partnership between NYC and Beijing, this is another example of New York Democrats facilitating the influence campaign of Communist China. I am calling for a complete investigation into Kathy Hochul and her administration so that hardworking New York taxpayers receive the transparency we deserve.”

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/03/is-the-western-world-still-free/

The recent arrest of Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, has been in the news. Anti-Russian westerners cheered these events on, even though Durov had fled Russia years ago in order to pursue his techno-libertarian dreams in peace. Adding to the intrigue, the arrest may have included an element of treachery, as some reports say he was invited to visit France by French President Emmanuel Macron, only to be arrested on the tarmac. Mon Dieu!

The ostensible basis for Durov’s arrest is criminal responsibility for various unsavory things that have happened on his Telegram platform. This kind of vicarious liability for hosting websites, particularly those involving user communications and forums, is not entirely new, but it is controversial and always applied very selectively.

No one has rounded up Mark Zuckerberg, even though snuff films, child pornography, and a great many other terrible things have happened on Facebook. On the other hand, after the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting in 2018, there was an outcry against the less regulated Gab website, which is a more freewheeling discussion app similar to Twitter. Similarly, the 8chan message board, on which a mass shooter in El Paso posted a mini-manifesto in 2019, faced hosting and other boycotts from service providers leading to a shutdown shortly after the public outcry.

Whether aimed at individual speakers or entire forums, censorship is on the rise, and it finds its roots in a changing set of values. There is less respect for the principles of free speech, especially among younger people. New principles like the evil of “platforming” bad actors and the importance of psychological “safety” prevail.

As these new values have risen in prominence, the internet’s early, libertarian ethos has mostly gone away.

Deep State Gets More “Bang for the Buck” When Pressuring Monopolies

NO POSTING UNTIL TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 3

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trumps-ridiculers-havent-learned-their-lesson/

The impulse to mock every word out of Trump’s mouth sometimes exposes his critics as the ignorant ones, as with recent reactions to his space-defense proposal.

Donald Trump has once again said something about space. And according to the former president’s reflexive critics, it is positively hilarious.

“One of my proudest achievements in my first term was to create Space Force, the first new branch of the armed forces in over 70 years; it’s a big deal,” Trump said in a Monday address to the National Guard Association conference in Detroit. With that legacy achievement in his pocket, Trump announced a plan to build on it. “I agree that the time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force,” he said. In addition, “We’re going to build a great Iron Dome for missile defense around our nation.”

Trump’s skeptics are enjoying a hearty guffaw over the former president’s latest proposal. “Trump’s campaign has earthly problems,” read Politico’s gratuitously impish headline, “but he’s focusing on outer space.” Trump “promises to waste BILLIONS of tax dollars,” the super PAC American Bridge remarked. Indeed, the former president backed the creation of a sixth branch of the armed forces devoted to low-earth orbit only “because he thought it sounded cool,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen posited. And what’s with the Iron Dome talk? “I have a hunch it’s because he likes the words ‘iron’ and ‘dome,’” he speculated.

This fits a pattern, but by now, Trump’s hecklers should have trained themselves out of exhibiting it. It was obvious from the moment it was proposed that a new branch of the armed forces devoted to exo-atmospheric operations was necessary, if only because space had already become a theater of war. Likewise, creating a “a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force,” as Trump proposed, is a remedy to an unworkable proposal offered by Joe Biden.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/armed_with_heavy_firepower_venezuelan_gang_of_illegals_seizes_control_of_entire_apartment_complex_in_aurora_co.html

Is Aurora, Colorado home to our first official “no-go” zone?

“Disturbing new footage from Aurora, Colorado reveals that an illegal immigrant gang has completely seized control of an entire apartment complex. This gang, originating from Venezuela through the Biden-Harris open border policy, is deeply involved in human smuggling, brutal… Show more+”

Seeing as these men are reportedly from the socialist Venezuela, Tim Walz might just consider this “neighborly” behavior—but the American neighbors are fleeing as quickly as possible. Per a report from a local Colorado news outlet:

The video was shot in the building where Cindy and Edward Romero lived until Wednesday. FOX31 caught up with them as they loaded up their stuff and moved out.

‘It’s been a nightmare and I can’t wait to get out of here,’ former resident Cindy Romero said.

The Romeros say the trouble started when a large number of migrants began moving in.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/28/government-shutdown-possible-next-month-if-proof-of-citizenship-bill-added-to-must-pass-continuing-resolution/

Democrats are prepared to shutdown the government next month over common-sense voter security measures attached to a must-pass continuing resolution (CR).

The CR is required to keep to keep the government funded past Sept. 30, and House conservatives may use it to force consideration of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, the Hill reported. The bill, if passed, would make it mandatory for states to obtain proof of citizenship to register voters and require states to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

Democrats strongly oppose all voter integrity measures, arguing that they aren’t necessary and make it harder for legal citizens to vote.

The House passed the SAVE Act on July 10 with a majority of 216 Republicans and five Democrats.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has yet to take the proof of citizenship bill up in the Senate.

“Today 198 House Democrats voted against preventing illegal aliens from voting in American elections,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) after the vote last month. “Over the past four years, Joe Biden has welcomed millions upon millions of illegals into the country knowing that noncitizens only have to check a box to vote in a federal election.”

Earlier this month, the House Freedom Caucus urged Johnson to attach the the SAVE Act to next month’s spending legislation. With the November election on the line, Republicans in both chambers have joined the chorus.

Although the Democrat-led Senate is expected to reject the package, the Speaker is taking the idea seriously, telling the press last week that discussions are ongoing to “build consensus to come up with the final decision.”

“I can verify for you that the SAVE Act is a big part of this conversation,” Johnson said. “And it is not just the Freedom Caucus—it is members across the conference who share the same concern that we do about this. And we believe it’s one of the — perhaps the most urgent issue, the most imminent threat facing the country, is the integrity of this election cycle.”

On the GOP Senate side however, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office, according to Axios, has been privately pushing against attaching the SAVE Act to the September spending bill.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) said this week that he disagrees with Senate GOP leadership on this, arguing there is no good argument against it.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The word freedom is inherent to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is ingrained in what it means to be an American: “And so let freedom ring,” spoke Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963, “from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire…” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” which is not too different from the definition Noah Webster assigned the word in his 1828 Webster’s Dictionary: “A state of exemption from the power or control of another.” Freedom from fear and freedom from want (two of FDR’s “Four Freedoms”) are offerings of the state, but they do not meet the classical definition of freedom.

Democrats see the state as providing the conditions, through rules, laws, and regulations, that allow individuals opportunities – what are now called “positive” freedoms. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that men are born free but “everywhere he is in chains.” So the state exists to guarantee his liberty and freedom from the restraints of society. Without the state, he believed, there is no freedom. Voltaire disagreed. The state can be a trap: “It is difficult to free fools from chains they revere.”

Republicans define freedom, in accordance with John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, as natural rights, characterized by the absence of external (the state) constraints on individual freedoms. These freedoms are now referred to as “negative” freedoms. Locke, two generations earlier than Rousseau, had argued that people are naturally free and equal, and have a right to life, liberty and property that are independent of society’s laws, ideas borrowed by Thomas Jefferson in 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Bill of Rights, adopted in December 1791, exemplified individual freedom. The colonists had lived under a tyrannical king. Fearful of autocracy that could stem from a strong central government, they desired a limited, federalist government, one composed, as Lincoln later said, “of, by and for the people.”  In a September 25th, 1961 address to the United Nations’ General Assembly, President Kennedy warned: “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

Adam, founder of Open the Books was a friend and most admirable person. rsk

One-of-a-kind. Relentless optimist. Fearless visionary. 

These are a few of the descriptors I’ve heard over and over again in the days since we lost our founder and CEO, Adam Andrzejewski. 

It’s with a heavy heart that I tell you he passed unexpectedly last weekend, but he leaves behind a tremendous legacy. 

Adam was a leader in business, a family man, a marathon runner, and unmatched in his advocacy on behalf of taxpayers. We’ll miss him for his good nature, his ability to motivate, his optimism, his collaborative spirit, and so much more. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-progressives-long-march/

The “long march through the institutions” is the name given to the left’s turn towards Cultural Marxism as the means for taking control of the political order and shifting it to the left. For many conservatives, this movement in the Sixties accounts for the subsequent changes in political ideology, government policies, sexual mores, culture high and low, history, and revisions of school curricula from kindergarten to universities.

That narrative is accurate to a point, but it often suggests that before the Sixties our culture and politics were still firmly grounded in the Constitutional order, and Western culture defined by its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilizational origins. But the way for the left’s “long march” was prepared by the Progressives’ “march” that began over a century ago. The Democrats’ policy platform unveiled during their convention and endorsed by Kamala Harris is a good starting point for seeing Progressivism’s continuity with the Marxist march to the modern center-left Democrat Party that has been taken over by their expanding and hardening leftist caucus.

The platform obviously endorses the Dems’ technocratic, hypertrophied Federal Government, and the greater centralization of power necessary for their utopian ambitions. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the platform is also a peek into an economic worldview in which the government is the answer, almost no matter the question. While private businesses are always ‘gouging’ or adding ‘junk fees,’ or otherwise trying to rip somebody off, Washington’s wise men are capable of providing for the American people, if only they have the power to pass the laws and regulations.”

Here is an item from the platform predicated on a Progressive idea more than a century old: “Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege,” the platform asserts. “We’ll never quit fighting to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act.” The ultimate goal is to completely nationalize healthcare, which will no doubt make doctors unionized public employees, and lead to worse outcomes costing trillions of taxpayer dollar––as Britain’s National Health Service and Obamacare serially demonstrate.